Bled 1961, a most interesting tournament

An International Jubilee Grand Master Tournament was held at Bled, Yugoslavia in the Fall of 1961 in commemoration of Alexander Alekhine's victory there in 1931.

Many strong players participated:

Mikhail Tal, who had just lost his title decisively to Botvinnik 12.5-8.5 in the Spring, won.   But 18 year old Bobby Fischer is said to had earned a "moral victory" in this tournament.  Fischer was the only player to go undefeated and he beat Tal in their individual game.  Tal, however scored 76.3% while Fischer scored 71%.

"Chess Review" wrote:


"Chess Life" wrote:

Miguel Najdorf watching the above Fischer-Tahl game at Bled, 1961:

Is skinny dipping what differentiates the Mennonite girls from the Amish ones? 

Yeah, this was a good tournament in which both Tal and Fischer were seen as winners.  Gligoric scored well against a strong field, losing only 1 game.  Chessbase included this tournament in its "The Greatest Tournaments in the History of Chess -- 1851-1986"  CD.

Crosstable (right click/view image for full size):

Great stuff, batgirl! I was surprised to see how badly Portisch fared at this tournament given his strength at the time. Thanks for finding and sharing all this with us.

As for Amish girls, surprisingly I've never been able to tempt them into skinny dipping with me. I doubt if any would be interested nowadays!

Proud that a place now in my country offered this! 

P.s: You should totally visit Bled, Slovenia. :)

The Candidates the year after had the top two of Bled participating but then it was the players ending up 4th-6th in Bled that finished top three with quite a margin.

There were more wins than today.

More wins and more players outside the top 50 in the fields, but some quite drawish scores, for example Darga drawing all games against the top 13 finishers. Even Fischer drew 11 of the 19 games.

Yes, Tal beat all the players in the bottom nine places with the exception of Portisch with whom he drew. No mean feat. Those who finished in the bottom half of the table were grandmasters and none were pushovers.

Thanks CephaloMan for uploading the Fischer- Geller game and a most entertaining analysis and commentary. Fischer often seemed to have trouble playing against Geller with whom he only won three times (one of which was this game) and lost five times (as well as playing out several draws) during the course of his career.

Fischer's comments on this game in his book add some fun. I won't reproduce them all, but here are a few:

After 7...Qf6
"Geller looked quite happy after his novelty, but sounder is 7...Nf6 8.d4 Nd7 bolstering the center"

After 9.d4
"It's worth a pawn to open up the game"

After 9...Bxe4
"He still looked happy"

After 14...Qxg6
"Geller took a half hour on this recapture and stopped looking  happy"

After 18...d5
"Loses outright. In the post-mortem Tal tried to hold the game with 18...Rd8 19.Qe2 hxg but after 20.hxg black is in virtual zugzwang.

After 19...hxg
"Geller spent about forty minutes on this move."

Yes, Fischer is great in his book on the dramatic aspects of the games he annotates. Thanks 0110 etc!

 So we have 3 Heroes of Bled?

I just posted this little thing on the 1962-3 US Championship: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/the-day-fischer-lost

Fischer won the tournament, but Bisguer came in second in a tight battle, losing to Fischer in the end.

Here they are in the pentultimate game-

A curious optical illusion here is it looks from one perspective as though there is a white horse head leaning over Bisguier's back. That's what I first thought. The white shirt behind him. If you focus on the left arm, the left chin area could be the horse's left ear.

It's Bisguier's Spiritus Equus.

Batgirl rules!